In the field of vegetable processing, centrifugal dryers have been used after the cleaning process to remove surface liquids prior to packaging. Examples of such useful inventions include perforated drums that rotate the vegetables around the longitudinal axis of the drum. Generally, the washed vegetables are loaded into a basket or other container, which is then placed by hand in a drum in the dryer. The drum is spun in order to remove surface liquids.
Previously existing dryers have a number of disadvantages. Most prior dryers require the basket containing produce to be loaded and unloaded vertically. The basket and contents can weigh between 40–70 pounds. In such existing vertical dryers the operator must work the barrel free with arms extended straight with the center of mass away from the body and curl their arms up to lift the barrel above 24 inches or more, and then they must either step back with the barrel held up or twist their torso around to clear the enclosure. This is not a comfortable range of motion for repetitive tasks. Furthermore, holding the basket with arms extended to perform the loading or unloading is an ergonomically poor method for manually loading and unloading the dryers and back strains and injuries may result.
The produce in the containers used in typical pre-existing vertical produce dryers may be out of balance. At the revolutions per minute that such dryers run, out of balance loads can cause damage to both the dryer and to the produce. Manual readjustment of the load is required, and frequent manual intervention may reduce the quantity of product dried in a given time period.
Vertical dryers typically house the motor and other moving parts under the spinning drum. As a result, in some pre-existing dryer designs, these parts can be difficult to access, and may, in some case, require unbolting the dryer from the floor and placing it up on stands or laying the dryer on it's side.
What is needed is a dryer that can automatically balance it load, that is more ergonomically efficient that prior dryer designs for an operator to load and unload, and that allows easy access to parts of the dryer that are most likely to require service.